Sundown Over Empty Ground

Chapter 4 The Countersuit

The countersuit arrived at Harold's office in three separate envelopes. It was ninety pages long. It had been written by a lawyer named David Chen, who had been Eleanor's attorney for eight years, and it made a case that was, I had to admit, not entirely stupid.

The case was this. In 2019, I had been a college student with no income. In 2020, I had graduated with a degree in economics and a minor in accounting. In 2021, I had gotten a job at a small financial firm in a nearby city. In 2022, my father had gotten sick. In 2023, he had died. And in 2024, I had started asking questions about the trust.

The case alleged that I had used my financial training and my access to my father's records to open accounts in my own name, using a deceased cousin's Social Security number, and had moved money into those accounts over six years with the intention of hiding it from the estate. The case further alleged that I had done this in order to take control of the trust after my father's death, and that my claim against Eleanor was a preemptive strike designed to cover my own tracks.

The case was a lie. But it was a lie constructed with enough truth to be dangerous. I had been a college student. I did have financial training. I did have access to my father's records. And I had, in fact, requested the originals of the trust documents a week before filing my claim. The countersuit took those facts and rearranged them into a story that made me the villain and Eleanor the victim.

I read the whole thing in Harold's office. Then I put it down.

"It's good," I said.

"It's not good. It's a story. It has holes."

"It has enough holes for a jury to see through. But it's good enough to make people doubt me. That's all she needs."

Harold nodded. "The trial is set for four months from now. In the meantime, we need to be ready."

"What do we need."

"Depositions. Witnesses. The originals of the documents. And we need to be able to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the accounts weren't opened by you."

"How do we do that."

"The accounts were opened in person. We have the branch records. The branch is in a small town two hours away. We need to pull the surveillance footage from the day the accounts were opened."

"Do we know when that was."

"June 14, 2019. The first account. And April 3, 2021. The second."

I wrote the dates down. June 14, 2019. I had been in summer school that summer, taking a statistics class in a town six hours away. April 3, 2021. I had been at my job, the one I had started three months earlier, the one I still had.

"That's provable," I said.

"If the footage still exists. It's been five years. A lot of banks purge their tapes."

"Then we need to move fast."

Harold nodded. "I'll call the branch tomorrow. I'll request the footage. It might take a few weeks."

I spent the next two weeks doing something I had never done before. I started preparing for a fight I couldn't win with evidence alone. I needed witnesses. I needed people who would testify. I needed people who had seen the things I had seen and would be willing to say so in court.

I made a list. The estate manager, who had worked for my father for twenty years and had watched Eleanor take over the accounts. The housekeeper, who had been there when Eleanor had moved my mother's things out of the main bedroom. The gardener, who had been told to stop watering my mother's garden. The lawyer, Harold, who had known my father since before I was born.

I called every one of them. Two agreed to talk. One hung up on me. One didn't return my calls. The gardener agreed to testify if I could promise him it wouldn't cost him his job. The housekeeper agreed to testify if I could promise her the same. I couldn't promise either of them anything, and I told them so, and they agreed anyway.

On the third week, I drove out to the small town where the accounts had been opened. It was a two-hour drive, through farmland and small towns and the kind of landscape that felt like it hadn't changed since the 1950s. The branch was a small building on the main street, with a sign that said NORTHFIELD SAVINGS BANK.

I walked in. The woman at the front desk was in her sixties, with gray hair and a name tag that said MARGE.

"I need to speak to the branch manager," I said.

"That would be me."

"My name is Vivian Bellamy. I'm here about some account records."

Marge looked at me. She didn't say anything for a moment. Then she said, "You're the one from the lawsuit."

I hadn't expected that. "You know about the lawsuit."

"I read the paper. We don't get a lot of news out here. The lawsuit was in the paper."

"It was."

"I don't know what to tell you. We keep our records for seven years. The account was opened six years ago. The footage might still be here. Might not."

"Can you check."

Marge looked at me for another long moment. Then she said, "Come on back."

She led me into the back office, where there was a small room with a computer and a file cabinet. She sat down at the computer and started typing. I watched her hands move, slow and methodical, the hands of someone who had been doing this job for a long time.

"June 2019," she said. "We keep the tapes in the back. They're on a rotation. We keep three months of current footage and archive the rest. The archives are in the basement."

"Can you find the tape."

"Maybe. It depends on whether the archive was digitized. We digitized in 2020, but we only did the current tapes. The old ones might still be on VHS."

"VHS."

"Small bank. Small budget."

I waited while Marge went down to the basement. She was gone for ten minutes. When she came back, she was carrying a box.

"June 2019," she said. "We kept the tapes. We just didn't get around to digitizing them."

She set the box on the desk. Inside were six VHS tapes, each labeled with a date. I found the one I needed. June 14, 2019.

"Do you have a player," I said.

"In the back. The old security system."

She set up the tape. The footage was grainy and black and white and mostly useless. It showed the front door of the bank, the teller windows, the small lobby. At 11:42 a.m., the front door opened and a woman walked in. She was blonde, middle-aged, wearing a dark coat and carrying a leather handbag. She walked to the teller window and spoke to the teller for several minutes. Then she signed something, took out a piece of identification, and walked out.

I rewound the tape and watched it again. The woman was Eleanor. The coat was the one I remembered, a black wool coat she had worn for years. The handbag was the one she still used. The way she walked was unmistakable.

I looked at Marge. "Can you print me a still."

"Sure."

She printed me a still. A grainy black and white image of Eleanor Bellamy walking into a bank in a small town two hours from the estate, six years ago, opening an account in my name.

I put the still in my bag. I thanked Marge. I drove back to the hotel and called Harold.

"We have her," I said.